


To Win a Thousand Battles

by farad



Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-06
Updated: 2012-08-06
Packaged: 2017-11-11 12:59:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/478790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farad/pseuds/farad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in Maygra's awesome "Shadowriders Universe"; this follows very closely after "Aspirations of Angels and the Instincts of Beasts" (http://archiveofourown.org/works/81252).</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Win a Thousand Battles

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt from the lovely Rothesis - Chris/Vin, any universe but OW, grin. Unbeta-ed, all mistakes my own.

_"It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell."_ \- Buddha

 

 

"But – how do you know?" Nathan leaned forward, his face tight with worry. "The demon - "

 

"We know the demon," Buck said, and even though he was smiling, Chris heard the tension in his voice. It wasn't a sound he had become accustomed to, and it was a sound he didn't like. But over the past twenty-five years, since the gypsies and the demon and all Hell breaking loose, it was a sound he heard more and more. This new life – or death – didn't sit well with Buck anymore than it did the rest of them.

 

"How can you know the demon?" Nathan said, his voice holding something as unusual for him as the tension was for Buck: disdain.

 

They were taking on characteristics they had fought against in their former lives.

 

"You're right," Chris said with a sigh, holding up a hand to stop the conversation where it was. "We don't know the demon – we can't. It changes with the wind." He was tired of this – he'd had the same conversation with Josiah several nights ago, when Josiah had walked into Vin's room, worried that there was a problem.

 

Nathan nodded, sitting back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. "So - "

 

"But we do know Vin." He looked at Nathan across the warn kitchen table, meeting his gaze. He wasn't sure what was more amusing, the surprise, the suspicion, or the relief.

 

The suspicion won out, though, but it was more tempered when Nathan resumed his attack. "We knew him a long time ago. Back before he . . . "

 

Chris swallowed and looked away. The memory of it, Vin covered in blood, the woman staring up at them, the smile on her face, her eyes open and innocent even though her body was ripped and chewed and mutilated -

 

"That wasn't Vin," Buck said, his voice calm but cold. Flat and sure, as sure as Chris had ever heard it. Sure, but not with the emotional conviction that had been his pattern before. Chris could recall, almost as clearly as if it had been yesterday, the way Buck had defended JD in the aftermath of the death of that woman, Annie something, the woman who had been killed accidentally when JD had tried to stop a bank robbery. He could remember the way Buck had wanted the woman who had shot JD hunted down, the way he had avoided, for perhaps the first time in his life – at that time – a woman because he couldn't accept that women had the ability to hurt the same way that men did.

 

He remembered the way Buck had never doubted Vin, not from the day he and Vin had been found together, the day it had all started. Whatever had happened to them that day in the desert, it had changed the conviction Buck had about Vin. Of all of them, Buck was the one who believed in Vin, the man, no matter how horrible Vin, the demon, behaved.

 

That was his conviction now, too, not emotional, not questioning. He knew the difference between Vin and the demon. He knew Vin Tanner, perhaps in a way that Chris didn't. It was a thought that Chris avoided, more and more these days.

 

Nathan drew a deep breath, shaking his head. He'd talked to Josiah, Chris had no doubt of that. Since this had started, Josiah and Nathan had become as dependent on each other as Chris and Buck had. If one of them knew something, the other did. It was only a matter of the detail that Josiah had shared, and Chris assumed that most of what Josiah had seen the other night, Nathan now knew.

 

The fact that Buck was involved was still something they were all dancing around.

 

Something Chris, himself, was dancing around.

 

"Vin ain't the same as he was – before," Nathan said slowly, measuring his words. "I don't mean the demon, I mean Vin, the man we knew. He's . . . well, he's afraid."

 

"Yep," Buck agreed with no hesitation. "Afraid of hurting any one of us, afraid of losing what little control he has, afraid of - "

 

"Afraid of living," Nathan said with a sigh. "Afraid of being happy because it will cost him." He shook his head, then he turned to look out the window, into the night. They were surrounded by forest, so there wasn't much to see, really, and Chris suspected that he was thinking.

 

He didn't blame him. Nothing that Nathan was worried about hadn't already crossed Chris' mind, not so far anyway. And perhaps that was what Chris needed to say, to cut off some of this worry at its point. "He wants this, Nathan. As I explained to Josiah, we know what he thinks when we're bleeding him."

 

Nathan shoulders stiffened. "Yeah, he told me. Nice of you two to leave that detail out."

 

Chris felt the flare of his own temper, but Buck got the answer first. "Didn't seem like Vin wanted everyone to know," he said softly. "Bad enough he can't keep us out of his head. And now you do. What are you bitching about, Nathan? What's going on with Vin or the fact that you didn't know about it?"

 

Nathan turned to glare at him, but after a few seconds, the heat lessened. "There are so many ways this ain't right," he said, but there was no anger in the words now, just tiredness. "But as long as you're sure that it's Vin, and that he wants it . . . "

 

Buck leaned forward, angling so that he met Nathan's eyes. "You think I'd let something happen to Vin, something he didn't want? I was there that day, Nathan, and I swear to you, if he hadn't done what he did, it'd be me with that thing in me. I surely won't let anything happen to him that he don't want, not as long as I can stop it."

 

Nathan sighed but he nodded, then he turned to Chris. "You take care of him," he said shortly. "And you watch our for yourself, too. That damned demon . . ."

 

Chris nodded. They all knew the way that sentence ended. He pushed up from the table and stood up. There was work to do, while they could. "You're going into town tomorrow?" he asked.

 

Nathan nodded, his hands dropping away from his chest to fall to the table. "Josiah and Ezra are here tomorrow. JD and I are going to go get some supplies, check on a few things. Think JD wants to visit with that Smithwick girl." He said it pensively, as if he wasn't sure it was a good thing.

 

Buck laughed, reaching out to slap Nathan on the shoulder. "Good, JD needs some fun, something – well, something normal."

 

"Normal," Nathan muttered, but he was amused.

 

Chris left the two of them to it, plotting how to give JD as close to a few days of being human as any of them could get. He made his way through the dark hallway and up the stairs to the room he knew better than any other in this house. He turned the doorknob, trying to be as quiet as possible, but as he peered inside at the still figure on the bed, the moonlight caught the pale skin and the slow blink of tired eyes.

 

"Didn't mean to wake you," he said quietly, but he entered the room anyway, closing – and locking – the door behind him.

 

Vin shifted on the bed, looking up at him. A small, hesitant grin twitched over his thin lips.

 

Chris leaned down and caught those lips in his own, his fingers winding into Vin's hair. He'd never said it – would never say it, it was too dangerous on too many levels.

 

But it was that grin, as familiar as the man himself, that let Chris know it was Vin Tanner he touched and held and loved. The demon had many faces, and it used them well, especially Vin's smile.

 

So far, though, it hadn't found Vin's grin, the slight twist of his lips that came with his wry, dry humor. He wasn't sure the demon ever would. It was a part of Vin's personality, something the demon hadn't mastered.

 

It was that grin that Chris swallowed now, a part of Vin that was his alone.

 


End file.
